We performed a comparison between IBM PowerVM and VMware vSphere based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Server Virtualization Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of managing the hardware resources such as RAM, CPU, and the network."
"We always recommend PowerVM to our customers; it is better than most solutions."
"Technical support is great."
"The feature that I like most is the versatility."
"It's scalable. Whenever we buy another product other than hardware, it's easily integrated into the virtualization software that we download."
"IBM PowerVM's most valuable feature is stability."
"The most valuable feature of IBM PowerVM is the performance of the database workload."
"The case fileserver on the web server is the most valuable feature."
"Vmware vSphere is the benchmark of the visualization market."
"The most valuable features for us are HA, DRS, and SDRS."
"The installation process is very straightforward."
"The technical support is good and they are available over the internet."
"VMware vSphere has plenty of features."
"We have seen a performance boost because we have been able to more dynamically allocate either memory or processors."
"It makes managing your virtual servers easier and more centralized."
"The most valuable features are the resilience of the solution and vMotion."
"The licensing could be better."
"The hardware licensing model could be improved because the licensing model is a bit different from the standard hardware procured."
"The performance should be improved."
"I don't know whether this has been trialed already, but IBM should give us an alert when we reach seven or eight failovers so that we can automatically switch it to manual mode. That would be great because if we cross the 10-day licensing limit, we have to pay a hefty license cost to Oracle. If IBM could view that feature, it would be helpful in license compliance."
"IBM PowerVM could improve the price because it is expensive."
"The interface is not user-friendly in places, so it could use some improvement."
"A GUI version of VIOS would be a great plus for people moving from Intel-based hypervisors."
"IBM PowerVM does not integrate with Microsoft."
"It would be great if VMware could have a consolidated way of delivering this as software rather than pieces and several add-ons so that you could enjoy the product in its entirety."
"the HTML version of things needs to get a little bit better. The vSphere side of things gets a little difficult to manage; right-click, in some browsers, doesn't work as well as it used to. I'm seeing a little bit of general latency that we didn't used to get with the thick client, although it's getting there."
"We want to see improvement from VMware with security. We want minimal downtime. We want automation. We want to deploy more efficiently."
"They should make it more efficient and stable."
"The biggest room for improvement would be just simplicity. It is very intuitive, but it needs somebody with a lot of IT background."
"In the last couple of years, the breaking apart of specific added benefits and charging license upcharges for them. That would be the only negative thing that I have to say: As a large consumer of the Hypervisor, we have a hard time justifying the cost of utilizing the extra products, especially when it's a couple of grand here and there, a couple of hundred dollars here and there. It's hard for an IT administrator or an architect to sell to upper management. When they're seeing so much ROI from the Hypervisor, it's hard to show them that there is extra value in the additional products that can be tied on top."
"They should improve their storage management part. vSphere has its own file system type, called VMSS, and that file system doesn't report on proper data usage or things like that. There are certain loopholes wherein it sometimes shows you erroneous data. Again, their VMSS file system, their data storage management system, and its reporting must be improved a lot."
"The vSphere Client always feels slow, and/or like it doesn't keep up with what I'm trying to do. So I usually use the thick client most of the time."
IBM PowerVM is ranked 9th in Server Virtualization Software with 25 reviews while VMware vSphere is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 446 reviews. IBM PowerVM is rated 8.4, while VMware vSphere is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of IBM PowerVM writes "A stable system for high-end data processing with a great support structure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSphere writes "Offers good performance and is useful for banking systems". IBM PowerVM is most compared with Hyper-V, KVM, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Oracle VM VirtualBox and Proxmox VE, whereas VMware vSphere is most compared with Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM, VMware Workstation and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). See our IBM PowerVM vs. VMware vSphere report.
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